Metal and hard rock reviews

Gojira – L’enfant Sauvage (Roadrunner 2012)

I am not too familiar with Gojira, but I have seen them live a couple of times and for some reason I’ve bought all their albums, so I figured I’d write a short review of their latest one.

Gojira, one of the true innovators of metal over the last decade, sound surprisingly stale on this album. It’s still creative, progressive and exciting metal and yet different than before, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, every band needs to change things up a bit every now and again. Gojira seems to follow a bit more than lead on this album. The sound is more conventional, melodies and harmonies (and time signatures) are easier too follow and the entire album is easier accessible then earlier releases.

The albums opens with two great songs, “Explosia” and the title track “L’enfant Sauvage”. Both numbers with the classic Gojira sound, massive amounts creativity and passion. “The Axe” also sounds sort of familiar, but without being noteworthy. “Liquid Fire”, “the Wild Healer” and “Planned Obsolescence” are not the best Gojira material. “Mouth of Kala” is without a doubt my favorite track on L’enfant Sauvage, hypnotic is the word that best describes it.

“The Gift of Guilt” has some nice melodies, but other than that doesn’t really do anything for me. The three last songs; “Pain is a Master”, “Born in Winter” and “the Fall” has something of a filler vibe to them. They give of a feeling of something unfinished, they all have moments of brilliance, but as whole songs they don’t work.

Turns out, I have really mixed feelings about this album. At certain points it fantastic, but it also borders on generic and stale from time to time. This problem is consistent on the entire album, with the honest exception of “Explosia”, “L’enfant Sauvage” and “Mouth of Kala”.